Return to the Return to the NIGHT OF ADVENTURE!

Seven geeky guys with a little too much imagination and a mild streak of attention-deficit disorder get together on a Sunday night in Los Angeles for one epic NIGHT OF ADVENTURE!

It's your recap of our latest Dungeons & Dragons game, Hollywood style.

Now that I've lost 40% of my readership with that introduction, let's get this thing going. NERDS!

• We begin our NIGHT OF ADVENTURE! by debating the best American comedy of all time. It comes down to Groundhog Day vs. Ghostbusters.
• There's no group consensus other than: Bill Murray is a funny dude.
• Runners-up include Dr. Strangelove and Caddyshack. (Peter Sellers is the Bill Murray of his generation.)
• Princess Bride gets a nerd pity vote. (Let's be honest, the movie loses some steam after Wesley gets paralyzed/mostly-deaded.)
• Ooops. Spoiler alert!
• Sandwiches are eaten, the weekend box office is reviewed (This is Los Angeles, after all -- Bruno down 70%!) and then: It's time to level up our characters.
• Unspoken 4E Core Design Principle: Every other level we're going to make you rewrite your entire character sheet.
• I spend ten minutes choosing a feat (Distant Advantage!) and forty minutes erasing anything that has a column for +1/2 level.
• Unspoken 4E Core Design Principle: You'll find our online Character Builder really handy!
• I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid.
• And that's why I have carpal tunnel.
• This is the part of my blog where you make a really predictable, off-color comment about why I really have carpal tunnel.
• You are hilarious.
• One hour and 45 minutes into the "game" we get out the miniatures. I gain nerd cred by providing my own figure. I lose nerd cred by not having it painted.
• I don't want to gain too much nerd cred, it'll take me too long to rewrite my character sheet.
• Unfortunately there is no online Tom Lommel Nerd Cred calculator. Unless you go by page views.
• Or re-tweets.
• I won't hold it against you if you don't know what a re-tweet is.
• Mom.
• 7:50pm and we are gaming! Commence acquisition of nerd cred!
• Since we last left our heroes they had:
  • Cleared out the House of Endless golems. (Doesn't seem possible, given the name, but we did it.)
  • Sold the ultra-swank carriages we found in the necromancer's mansion. (I forgot to blog the session which turned out to be the D&D equivalent of Cribs.)
  • Bought some boss magic items. (Cloak of the Walking Wounded!)
  • Commandeered a boat. (Gimme your boat!)
  • Got attacked by an undead kraken which nearly wrecked said boat. (Whatever you do, don't leave the boat!)
  • Washed up on the shore of a deserted island. (Now you HAVE to leave the boat!)
• The only thing that's for sure out of all this: The island is not deserted.
• Also: the word "boss" is about to come back into fashion in a BIG way.
• Tom Lommel: trendsetter.
• Ten minutes after landing on the island, we are attacked by a shambling mound, two gricks, and a dozen exploding bugs.
• I told you the island was not deserted.
• Still skeptical about the "boss" thing?
• Things You Do Not Want To Hear the DM Say To Their Co-DM, Part One: "Should we roll initiative for all the different critters as a group or individually?"
• Things You Do Not Want To Hear the DM Say To Their Co-DM, Part Two: "Who has the worst Armor Class?"
• It turns out the bugs are easy to kill, but when they explode they coat you in a slime that smells like the floor of a frat house bathroom after an all-night pledge party.
• That's not enough to keep you from using your daily power that blows up 5 bugs in one fell swoop.
• Clearly I've never been in a fraternity.
• Things You Do Not Want To Hear the DM Say To Their Co-DM, Part Three: "The computer calculated how much damage he can do. I trust the computer."
• At this point I'm not sure if we're playing D&D or Paranoia.
• With this group, I'm not sure it matters.
• Unspoken 4E Core Design Principle: TRUST THE COMPUTER.
• Three rounds into the combat, we've killed all the frat party bugs and the jungle looks like the aftermath of the world's messiest kegger/luau. It is at this point that the shambling mound coughs up a deadly spray of thorns.
• Actually: thorn-SPIKES.
• Yeah, that's never good.
• The sorceror takes a thorn-spike in the eye. IN THE EYE.
• That character is played by one of the DMs. No one's concerned.
• The shambling mound proceeds to whale on the fighter. The fighter avoids its blows like he's covered in Round-Up. The gricks ineffectually wriggle their tentacle thingies at us.
• That didn't come out the way I wanted it to.
• Nor did that... Errrr, MOVING ON!
• Things You Do Not Want To Hear the DM Say To Their Co-DM, Part Four: "We should have put more bugs out."
• Nomination for most juvenile battlecry of the game: "I will stab you IN THE GRICK!"
• I'm not going to tell you who yelled that battlecry.
• I have nerd cred to maintain.
• In the heat of battle, you have the awesome idea to set the giant shambling plant monster on fire. YES! ON FIRE! It's a plant! It's BRILLIANT!
• This being 4th Edition, your brilliant plan proceeds to fail in a spectacularly miserable and irrational fashion.
• Yes, you just tried to throw flaming tar on the lumbering Swamp Thing and it DIDN'T WORK.
• Things You Do Not Want To Hear the DM Say To Their Co-DM, Part Five: "I should say you fellows are dealing with a professional monster."
• It's times like these I wish we WERE playing Paranoia.
• At least then I'd know my clone would be back in ten minutes to take revenge on my pitifully mutilated corpse.
• Plus we'd have LASERS. No plant-thing can resist LASERS.
• Ninety minutes, a dozen shuriken, and 300 hit points later, you finally kill the evil tree creature.
• In a fit of poetic justice, you decide to hack it apart and use it to fix your boat.
• Later that afternoon, you encounter: a demi-god.
• Can't be any harder to kill than an inflammable plant monster, right?
• It turns out the demi-god doesn't want to kill you, he has a question for you.
• Hey, you know what like, a really cool thing to say is when, like, a demi-god is all like, "Dude, I have a question for you." and you're like, "Sweet! Is it 'How do you want to word your wish'?" and he's all like, "Ummm... No." and you're all like "Dude, can't blame a guy for tryin'." and he's like, "Yeah, look, can I get to my question?" and you're like, "Is that the question, cause I TOTALLY know the answer!" and he's like "NO that's NOT the question." and you're like "Oh. My bad." and he's like "ANYWAY. The question is: What is in your heart?" and maybe you WANT to say "A bag of Doritos and a six-inch meatball sub" but then you remember that that's your stomach and not your heart even though they say 'The way to a man's heart is through his stomach' but that probably doesn't apply because you're not a man - you're an elf, and so you think to yourself of that one time you read that one book where they asked the dude with the giant cat and the two swords the EXACT same question and he was all cool and brooding and said "A THIRST FOR ADVENTURE!" and then he whipped out his scimitars and smacked them together KA-CHING!!? Well if you say that, it will be awesome.
• To be clear: not as awesome as making the demi-god an offering of Hygistian rum and a quarter block of hash, but still pretty cool.
• It turns out that if you give the demi-god a half-empty bottle of Hygistian rum and a quarter block of hash, he gives you a magic throwing star.
• Seems like a fair trade.
• The next thing you encounter is a tribe of 600 natives dancing around a giant bonfire and performing a ritual sacrifice to their enormous King Kong monkey god.
• Those guys might have questions for you too. You don't stick around to find out.

-Tom, who had a thirst for adventure but now has a hangover for adventure.